


The Only thing Big Enough

by Drakey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dragons, Gen, Introspection, No Dialogue, No Plot/Plotless, Sad-ish, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 11:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9069490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: It should have been a dragon, really, but it wasn't, and that was honestly a little disturbing. Then again, it shouldn't have actually been anything. Most people never really thought about it, if they had a soulmark, but Charlie couldn't avoid it, taking a shower or changing clothes, so instead of listening to questions about his tattoo, he fucked off to Romania, because why not dragons?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a plot bunny that's been sitting around for a couple of weeks. i might build an AU based on it, because it intrigues me and I've not seen a soulmate AU that I really enjoyed yet, so I want to explore the problems inherent in them. I have to finish With Apologies first, though.

> Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea  
>  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honali
> 
> Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail  
>  Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail  
>  Noble kings and princes would bow whene'er they came  
>  Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name
> 
> Oh, Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea  
>  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honali  
>  Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea  
>  And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honali
> 
> A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys  
>  Painted wings and giant's rings make way for other toys  
>  One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more  
>  And Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar
> 
> His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain  
>  Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane  
>  Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave  
>  So Puff, that mighty dragon, sadly slipped into his cave

Charlie had always hated his soulmark. It was a sailing ship, mottled and dark about three inches from bow to stern, four from keel to crow's nest, centered on the spot where his left hip had jutted a bit when he'd been rangy and skinny in second year, before he filled out and became the seeker on the quidditch team. Its sails were full of wind, blowing out towards the tiny forecastle and making the whole thing look like it was running before a gale.

Mum used to say that it made him her special boy, that he was lucky to have something so unique, and that all the others would be jealous and definitely one day he would meet a girl who had the same mark (or maybe a boy; Mum wasn't picky), and they'd fall in love and get married and have a beautiful home and a zillion kids and all Charlie could think of was that when he went into Hogwarts he got so _sick_ on the rowboats on the way across the lake that he had to hold onto a bucket until they let the first years into the Great Hall.

A sailing ship, for a boy who couldn't even handle a rowboat so rock steady that it might have been a cart rolling across a perfectly flat road? 

And besides, Charlie wasn't an idiot. He knew the odds. Everyone had a soulmark, and they were supposedly alive (if everyone lived a natural lifespan, which was no guarantee) for at least a couple of decades at the same time as whoever had the matching soulmark, but there were literally millions of wizards and witches in the world, and it was so hard to find your soulmate that even those few people who were wealthy enough to search usually gave up. And it was hard not to give up. When couples got together, there was this frantic searching across each other's bodies sometimes, this touching and inspecting, but it wasn't _easy,_ because a soulmark wasn't supposed to look like anything, it was supposed to be just a little birthmark, a blob on the skin, and if you got down to it, everyone had those all over, you never found anyone with perfect, unmarked alabaster skin and no blemishes and all that. That wasn't how people were, that was like one of those android things his friend Dina had told him about when she tried to convince him to watch science fiction with her.

Dina. Merlin, but he'd loved her. It would have been nice if they were soulmates. But he had a fucking boat on his hip and she had all sorts of interesting things, and they'd got really bored and really _teenaged_ once while they were staying at Hogwarts over the holidays, and he knew intimately that she had all sort of interesting things. One of them was a blob that was sort of purpley and vaguely crescent moon shaped on the top of her right buttock. One was a little cafe au lait spot on her breast that he had gigglingly drawn a face and hair on with one of her muggle drawing markers, and they'd laughed and laughed as he turned it into a drawing of Professor Snape scolding a class. None of them were detailed silhouettes of eighteenth-century seagoing vessels, because nobody had that, nobody at all had a boat on their body, it was fucking crazy to have a boat on your body.

And why a boat?

Charlie wondered every time he saw his hip, he stared and shook his head, because he'd gotten incredibly ill once when he told Piotr Verskane about it (okay, when Piotr saw it and he asked and Charlie confessed everything right away because you don't wrangle Hungarian Horntails with a bloke and not trust him with anything and everything about you), and Piotr had taken him out on a proper old sailing ship (which Charlie thought was rickety and unsafe) just to see if maybe it was only rowboats he hated. Piotr had taken him back off the boat immediately and apologized and hugged him even though he was kind of splashed with sick a little, and he'd taken care of Charlie very nicely and acted like maybe he wanted to do more, but by then Charlie knew better.

He'd learned from Dina that he didn't particularly like to get really bored and really teenaged, and he'd learned from Amandine (three moles in a right triangle on her left leg, a big splotchy area on her spine, and two reddish areas on her arms) that he didn't particularly want a girlfriend, since it was impossible not to look at the ship on his side. He'd learned from Colin (port wine stain on his left hip, somewhat discolored toes, and an interestingly-shaped mole in a very private place that he shaved to ensure it was visible) that he didn't particularly want a boyfriend, though he didn't mind having one, because the only human being he really wanted was someone with a sailing ship running from a storm, and he didn't care if it was a ninety-year-old woman with the mark stretched across entirely too much thigh or a twenty-something girl living as a muggle supermodel and passing it off as an arm tattoo, or a muscular middle-aged man with a ship perpetually sailing into his arsehole or fucking Harry Potter trying to pretend there wasn't a boat on his navel.

But charlie had never met the one human being there was in the world that he could possibly want, so he didn't want _anyone at all_ and he didn't know why that was so damn hard for people to just accept. He wasn't a stereotypical man, all burning libido and testosterone (another fancy word from Dina, he should really get in touch with her for a chat. He'd heard she'd married a muggle girl and they were living in France somewhere), he didn't need to have something on his dick at all times just to feel good about himself.

It should have been a dragon.

He could remember The Flyover, that time a Welsh Green had spent a day circling over Hogwarts, how it had been huge, and there he was, just thirteen, staring up and thinking that it was the only thing in the world that was _big enough._ He'd mentioned the feeling to Bill, and Bill had darted a glance at his hip and asked if maybe Charlie thought that dragons could fill the hole where his soulmate should be. That wasn't it. He knew better than to try to fill that hole with anything, than to even think of it as a hole, exactly. H had read what finding your soulmate was like, and it wasn't filling a hole. the holes were still there, it was just that you found someone whose holes lined up neatly with your own, who complemented you in ways you didn't expect, didn't want, didn't need, but grew quickly to love.

Sometimes, Charlie wondered if Harry had found his soulmate and been fucked over by it, like he secretly shared an identical mole with You-Know-Who or Professor Snape or Draco Malfoy or someone awful like that (he wondered about Harry a lot, because he had a strange, unique mark and he was there with Ginny at every family gathering, and he looked appealingly domestic with kids hanging off his arms, and like he wasn't at all the sort of person who would have a goddamn sailboat on his hip), and he thought maybe he should talk to him about it, because Harry _got_ weird shit and he'd probably have good advice, at least on what to drink to forget.

But if his soulmate wasn't supposed to fill in the hole (which hole, he reminded himself, didn't actually exist), then maybe dragons were big enough to be His Thing, were big enough to be something that the world could be there for. Humans were so small and strange and dishonest, and dragons were big and they were majestic and they didn't care about anything, you kept them in the preserve by making it the best place for them, because you couldn't actually stop them from going anywhere. 

Dragons were straightforward, they were always completely honest (usually about wanting to eat you or kill you or kill you and eat you or kill you and feed you to their young or toss you to their young as training for how to kill you and eat you, but honesty isn't always pleasant), they were creatures of legend and myth and fact and ugly reality, untameable, and wild, and free.

Sometimes, Charlie would fly on his broomstick over the preserve, and there would be a Hebridean Black, a Swedish Short-Snout, a Chinese Fireball, and it felt so right, so perfect, to be the smallest thing in the sky, because he was a seeker, and he could look for the snitch all he wanted, but the sky was a trillion times his size, and he was too small, but a dragon was the only thing that was big enough, for the sky, for the world, for anything.

Charlie Weasley had a sailing ship on his side, three inches long and four inches tall, with billowed sails, right where his hip used to just out when he was skinny and rangy in second year, and if he ever got tired of the spread wings and fierce roars, he would wither up and die, because dragons were the only thing that was big enough, except that if there were dragons in the world, that meant that it had to be big enough for the dragon to be in it, so if there weren't dragons in Charlie's world, then the world wouldn't be big enough anymore, it would turn small and petty and sour, and he would be all alone in a world gone mundane and tiny.

Charlie Weasley didn't have the epic love of his soulmate by his side, and he didn't fill his days with adventure, because dragons...

Dragons were big enough.


End file.
